Film Friday in Yuhuan China with Ilford Pan 400 by Lee Webb

October 6, 2017 film, Friday Film, Full Frame, Gadgets, Guest Post, News, User Reports 24

Film Friday in Yuhuan China with Ilford Pan 400

by Lee Webb

Hi, Steve and Brandon.

Thanks for keeping this wonderful photography resource running all these years and hopefully many more to come too.

My name’s Lee and I like to shoot street photography.

I mostly do so with vintage lenses on a digital body, although more recently I’ve been doing some film shooting too. This began when I picked up two film cameras from a charity shop in the UK. It only cost me for the pair of them.

One of these cameras – a Canon Sure Shot AF-7 – then ended up with me in the small Chinese coastal city of Yuhuan, in Zhejiang province.

Loaded with a roll of Ilford Pan 400, I set about documenting the place as I saw it. The images here are a few of my favorites from the trip. Being new to shooting monochrome film, this was one of my first experiences trying to find scenes that I thought would work well in black and white while viewing them myself in color.

This meant a lot of shapes, silhouettes, and shadows. I also tried to capture scenes of the (re)development that’s going on across the city.  Coupled with the grainy film, I think the subject matter makes the place seem kind of desolate, which is unfortunate!

I must say that Yuhuan, on the whole, is nicer than these images might suggest. 🙂 That said, I am pleased with how they turned out as photographic works, and I hope your readers enjoy looking at them too.

Perhaps, in keeping with the theme of this series, they’ll provide some inspiration to pick up a film camera too. Especially when they can be found so cheaply in charity shops.

These photographs are part of a wider set I published in a photo essay of my Yuhuan trip, which can be found here: http://www.myfavouritelens.com/yuhuan-film-photography-essay/

To see more of my photography, both with film and with vintage lenses, my Instagram is here: www.instagram.com/myfavouritelee/

Thank you, Steve and Brandon.

Keep up the great work.

Cheers.

Lee Webb

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24 Comments

  1. These Canon cameras are like precious jewels. My wife and I still have the camera (a Canon Prima 5 — 35mm f3.5) we used when we were dating, 17 years ago, and it is is excellent working condition. It is ‘energized’ with a lot of personal memories.
    I like your pictures a lot. The framing and the subjects are really interesting. I would urge you to invest in a better scanner, though, because now, there is a distinct moiré pattern in your pictures. Get rid of that, and your pictures are up there with the best!
    As for the grain, I think it was added in post, perhaps you were unaware of it – Lightroom often does that.

  3. I love your photo’s! Film is beautiful to my eye, there is a reality or connection to the subject which is missing with digital images.

  5. Nice work! Hard to say where the grain is coming from… Scanner, exposure, film type, development all could be factors, I get pretty good results from my slr’s and local lab and their noritsu scanner… So good I haven’t shot much digital for quite a while.

  8. The photos are so horribly grainy, digital is so much nice and lot more convenient and flexible. Puzzles me why some people using it. Experimentation I guess.

  10. I love these. Such beautiful photographs. Even much more beautiful than all this modern grainfree digital meaningless Hasselblad/Leica-Stuff we see these Days.

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